Originally, computing systems were extremely expensive and bulky, thereby limiting their availability and impact on our daily lives. Advancements in technology, however, have progressively and dramatically reduced the cost and size of computing systems while also greatly increasing the speed and computing power of the systems. Increasingly, more and more aspects of our lives have come to include some computer element associated with them. Indeed, computing systems have revolutionized modern life.
To take advantage of benefits potentially available through use of computing systems, computer users must be able to interact with their computers, to input the necessary information and/or data and to receive the desired output from the computer. In recent years, great advances also have been made in providing user friendly interfaces for communication between users and computing systems. Graphical user interfaces (“GUIs”), like those used in connection with computer programs operating on a WINDOWS® based computer operating system (available from Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash.), have become a popular choice for computer users. In such GUIs, a computer user may easily input and manipulate information in the computing system using a keyboard and/or a mouse-type input device (including trackballs, roller balls, and other similar input devices).
Other technological advances have further expanded the manner in which computer users may interact with their computing systems. Recently, stylus-based computing systems have become popular in which users interact with their computing systems using a pen or pencil shaped “stylus” to input and/or manipulate information. Examples of such stylus-based computing systems include personal digital assistants (“PDAs”) and tablet personal computing systems (“tablet PCs”). Using at least some examples of stylus-based computing systems, a user can write on an electronic screen using the stylus, and the computing system will save the user's handwritten text, either in its original form (as electronic “ink”) and/or as machine generated text, which may be obtained, for example, using a handwriting recognizer to convert the original handwritten text into an electronic form.
When using a stylus or electronic pen to write on electronic paper (e.g., in a pen-based computing system), the ink stroke may trail beyond the edge of the active user interface window during a pen stroke. When possible, such pen-based computing systems may continue recording the movement of the pen, even when it is outside of the active user interface window, because this additional information may help understand the writer's intent. For example, when writing a page of electronic notes, a writer may write the letter “y” toward the bottom of the active user interface window for the note. In some instances, the tail of this letter “y” may trail outside the active user interface window, but still on the electronic digitizer screen. If the portion outside the user interface window (i.e., the tail) is not recorded, the system may interpret the “tailless” letter “y” incorrectly as the letter “u.” This error may have a cascading affect on future actions, such as when the electronic ink is converted to machine generated text. Accordingly, some stylus or pen-based computing systems will continue to record movement of the electronic pen outside the active user interface window of the electronic document and maintain that pen movement as part of the electronic ink associated with the electronic document. That electronic ink exists outside the current view of the active user interface window.
In many WINDOWS® Operating System based applications, or other similar applications, the standard way of dealing with electronic document content located outside of the current active user interface window is through use of one or more scroll bars. A scroll bar indicates to a user that there is content out of view, and it allows the user to move this content into the view of the user interface window. In the above situation, however, in which the tail of a letter or other electronic ink or information trails outside of the active user interface window, the appearance of scroll bars while writing is still occurring may be distracting or confusing to the user, and the time required to produce the scroll bars may result in rendering delays and/or some shifting of the rendered content.
Accordingly, there is a need for electronic document display systems and methods that can overcome one or more of the deficiencies identified above.